“Look here, we ought to have settled more about what we’re to say when we’re asked questions. I chose a quiet-looking shop, but it turned out to be a sort of inn, where they were drinking pink gin—all very friendly, as usual, and I found myself under a fire of questions. I said we were on our way back to England. There was the usual rot about the smallness of the boat, etc. It struck me that we should want some other pretence for going so slow and stopping to explore, so I had to bring in the ducks, though goodness knows we don’t want to waste time over them. The subject wasn’t quite a success. They said it was too early—jealous, I suppose; but then two fellows spoke up, and asked to be taken on to help. Said they would bring their punt; without local help we should do no good. All true enough, no doubt, but what a nuisance they’d be. I got out of it——”
“It’s just as well you did,” I interposed. “We shall never be able to leave the boat by herself. I believe we’re watched,” and I related my experience.
“H’m! It’s a pity you didn’t see who it was. Confound that bobstay!” (his tactful way of reflecting on my clumsiness); “which way did he run?” I pointed vaguely into the west. “Not towards the island? I wonder if it’s someone off one of those galliots. There are three anchored in the channel over there; you can see their lights. You didn’t hear a boat pulling off?”
I explained that I had been a miserable failure as a detective.
“You’ve done jolly well, I think,” said Davies. “If you had shouted when you first heard him we should know less still. And we’ve got a boot, which may come in useful. Anchor out all right? Let’s get below.”
We smoked and talked till the new flood, lapping softly round the Dulcibella, raised her without a jar.
Of course, I argued, there might be nothing in it. The visitor might have been a commonplace thief; an apparently deserted yacht was a tempting bait. Davies scouted this possibility from the first.
“They’re not like that in Germany,” he said. “In Holland, if you like, they’ll do anything. And I don’t like that turning out of the lantern to gain time, if we were away.”
Nor did I. In spite of my blundering in details, I welcomed the incident as the first concrete proof that the object of our quest was no mare’s nest. The next point was what was the visitor’s object? If to search, what would he have found?
“The charts, of course, with all our corrections and notes, and the log. They’d give us away,” was Davies’s instant conclusion. Not having his faith in the channel theory, I was lukewarm about his precious charts.